Chapter 2
TWO
Zarya and Yasen stopped and turned around—partly because it would have been suspicious otherwise and partly to take in the aftermath. A cloud of dust and fire billowed across the sky, backdropped by Ishaan’s screams of panic and surprise.
Their gazes met, and they allowed themselves a small, triumphant smile before they turned and continued walking, heads down and hands linked as if they were simply attempting to flee the chaos.
It wouldn’t do to linger here for long. The royal soldiers would soon arrive and start asking questions. Zarya and Yasen hoped they’d blended in well enough for no one to remember they’d been anywhere nearby.
Zarya’s heart pounded with adrenaline as they wound through progressively less crowded streets. After months of careful planning and plotting, they’d delivered a crushing blow to the queendom of Gi’ana and scored a much-needed victory for the rebellion.
Finally, they turned a corner towards the four-story haveli that had been their home for the past three months. They’d rented the top floor, and this was where their fellow resistance members would convene once it was safe.
Checking one last time to ensure no one had followed, Zarya and Yasen entered the building made of the same creamy white marble as most of Ishaan’s homes and bounded up the spiral stairs. When they reached the top landing, they heard the low drone of their guests waiting inside.
Zarya opened the door and smiled at the sight of dozens of Aazheri and vanshaj filling their flat. It was generously sized, with an ample living space in the center, perfect for entertaining. To the right was a kitchen with white wooden cabinets and a small glass table where Zarya and Yasen ate their meals. On the opposite side were a series of doors leading to three separate bedrooms, and directly ahead was a wall of windows that opened onto a white stone balcony.
Some of their friends converged in the kitchen, bottles of beer and glasses of wine in their hands. Others lounged in the large sunken living room, propped up against thick cushions scattered on a bank of low divans and across the floor.
This was the vanshaj rebellion, known as the Rising Phoenix.
Ajay Chandra looked over with a wide grin as they entered. Short black hair framed a face made for royalty. Refined and elegant with a straight nose and high cheekbones, he looked fit for the cover of one of her romance novels. Dark brown eyes flecked with silver and filled with emotion regarded Zarya with admiration. Next to him stood his twin sister Rania, her same regal features sparkling with excitement.
They made up the second tier of the rebellion’s leadership and were both powerful Aazheri who had been working for years to bring about freedom for the vanshaj with little success.
Until tonight.
Ajay raced over to where Zarya stood, wrapping his arms around her, lifting her into a warm hug, and then placing her back on her feet before clapping Yasen on the back.
“We did it!” Ajay said. Rania hugged Zarya tightly as they all congratulated one another.
“Did you see it?” Zarya asked, accepting a glass of sparkling wine from a passerby. It was spectacular.”
Ajay and Rania had also been amongst the dozen rebels inside the warehouse, setting the bombs and then waiting for the signal.
“A group of city watch nearly caught us,” Ajay said, raising a glass. “But they are no longer our problem.”
“Why are you covered in ink?” Rania asked, scrutinizing the knees of Zarya’s pants and noting the discoloration staining her fingers.
“We ran into a little trouble,” Yasen explained while the twins’ eyebrows climbed up their foreheads.
“Everything was under control,” Zarya said with a wave of her inky hand.
That wasn’t entirely true, but they’d gotten lucky. She reached into her pocket. “But I only managed to swipe two bottles of ink.”
Rania looked at them and then at Zarya, her eyebrows knitting. Neither sibling understood what Zarya planned to do, but they hadn’t asked too many questions so far. Ever since she’d met Meera, the vanshaj soldier in Dharati, Zarya had wondered if her magic was connected to their tattoos or possibly the ink it was created with.
But the substance was highly regulated and controlled thanks to the Jadugara, and sabotaging the factory had been the perfect opportunity to get her hands on a few bottles.
She knew it was only a matter of time before Ajay and Rania began questioning her further, and she was worried about how they would react once they learned the truth.
“Really, we were fine,” Zarya said to Ajay again. “It was a close call, but we knew this was dangerous.”
“Don’t worry,” Yasen said, wrapping an arm around Zarya’s shoulders. “I took care of those guards.”
“I mean, he did,” she said. “Even if he’s not all that humble about it.”
“Always here to save your ass, Zee.”
She rolled her eyes as Ajay nodded and then turned to face the room, again raising his glass high as silence fell over the crowd.
“A toast,” Ajay said, his voice proud and strong. “After years of disappointment, the Rising Phoenix has dealt a fatal blow to the kingdoms and queendoms of Rahajhan and their inhumane practice of enslaving the vanshaj. Without the continent’s main source of ink, they will be prevented from branding babies barely out of their mothers’ wombs for a very long time!”
A round of cheers and clinking glasses circled through the room as Zarya watched Rania embrace her girlfriend, Farida, whose ring of tattooed stars stood out in contrast to her brown skin.
The two had met four years earlier in a tavern where Farida had worked as a server. The women had struck up a conversation, and Rania claimed she’d fallen in love that very night. After months of visiting the tavern to be in her company, Rania offered to purchase Farida’s servitude from the tavern owner for more than twice the going rate.
The twins’ high-brow looks came by them honestly as the offspring of one of the wealthiest noble families in Gi’ana. The tavern owner couldn’t say no, and Rania had effectively freed Farida from the insult of her servitude, but the collar of stars around her neck acted as an ever-constant reminder.
With Farida at the helm, the trio had begun to stir up a quiet resistance, eventually forming a council comprised of several vanshaj members. Significant decisions and necessary consultation went through them via Farida. The council preferred to remain anonymous for their safety, with their identities only known to Farida.
Rania and Farida also wished to wed, but the laws of Rahajhan forbade it.
The Chandras’ parents had no idea what their children were getting up to or that they had initially funded large portions of the rebellion. But Ajay and Rania were cut off when they couldn’t explain what they were doing with all that money. Their parents were sure they were dealing with something illegal, and they technically weren’t far off the mark.
Just when the twins believed their cause was lost, a mysterious and very wealthy benefactor appeared at the most opportune moment. No one had any clue about who was sending the money, but it always arrived with a note stating it was to be used in aiding the vanshaj rebellion in whatever manner they saw fit.
After Ajay’s toast, the conversation resumed as food was brought in from a restaurant owner who also supported their cause. They had friends throughout the city acting as ancillary members without ‘official’ ties to the resistance. Though it had been a small group at first, it was steadily growing as the months and years passed.
Great steaming platters of bright chicken makhani, bowls of sunny spiced saffron rice, and towers of buttery roti crowded the large kitchen table, the rich aromas filling the air.
The mood was high as plates were passed around, and the din rose with the excited chatter of a job well done.
Zarya took her glass of wine and walked outside to the wide balcony that wrapped around the apartment, surprised to find it empty. While she was pleased about the mission’s success, her joy was somewhat dampened by the fact that, after all these months, she still hadn’t found a way to contact her family—the Madan siblings—in the royal palace.
Only Yasen knew who her mother had been, and she wanted to keep it that way for now. The Madans were poorly regarded amongst the resistance due to their archaic laws and callous treatment of the vanshaj.
Zarya had clung to a vague hope that speaking with them wouldn’t be this complicated, but after months of petitioning to see the carefully guarded royals, she was no closer than she’d been when she’d left Daragaab with Yasen. She was wary of revealing her origins without understanding what manner of welcome she might receive, and thus, her requests were lost in a sea of other citizens’ needs and demands.
She wasn’t sure what she’d say to them, anyway: Hello, I’m your half-sister from our mother’s prophecy, and I’ve been working to undermine you ever since I arrived in Ishaan ?
Zarya turned at the sound of someone approaching as Ajay came to stand next to her.
“It’s quite a victory,” he said, staring into the distance.
“You should all be very proud,” she answered, and he turned to give her a soft smile.
“Have you made any progress on the tattoos? What do you need the ink for, exactly?”
She shook her head. For months, Zarya had considered how she might use her magic to break the enchantment bound inside the vanshaj tattoos, but so far, she had come up empty. Some deep-seated premonition told her the sixth anchor was the key.
No one else knew this secret, either—not even Yasen—but she had told the others that she felt something whenever she touched the markings.
She will be the one to free them all.
It had to be connected.
“I just have a…hunch,” Zarya said. “If magic binds them, then magic can surely undo it.”
He shook his head. “I know you’ve said that before, but others have tried before—why do you think you’ll succeed where so many have failed? I don’t mean to doubt you?—”
“No,” Zarya said, interrupting him. “You’re right to question me. I realize we haven’t known one another long, but I’m asking you to entertain this mystery until I can give you a more sufficient answer. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
Ajay nodded, turning to look out over the city. “Very well.”
She folded her arms as they watched a plume of black smoke hovering in the sky. His arm brushed against hers, and she stole a glance at his face, noting the carved lines of his rather pleasing profile.
She’d be lying if she hadn’t considered their relationship beyond mere friendship. But they were friends, and she was still nursing a broken heart.
“I’ll try some things with the ink first thing tomorrow,” she said, “I want to speak with Farida again if she’s willing.”
“Sounds good,” Ajay said. “I think I’ll go home and get some sleep.”
“You don’t want to stay and celebrate?”
He shook his head. “I’m quite tired. This has all been very draining.” He gestured vaguely out over Ishaan, where the glint of hundreds of shiny domed rooftops reflected in the moonlight.
Then he took her hand and leaned down to press his mouth to the back of it.
“Good night,” he said before he disappeared through the doorway.
After he was gone, she sank to the floor, threading her legs through the railings. She liked the sensation of dangling over a precipice, the world spinning below her. Ishaan sat inland, far from the sea, and she missed the feel of the ocean breeze and watching the water stretch for miles, where she could imagine an entire universe waiting on the other side.
“So you blue-balled Ajay again, I see?”
Zarya turned and snorted. Yasen leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed and a dark grey eyebrow lifted.
“Shut up.”
He sat down, allowing his long legs to dangle between the bars beside hers. “Come on. I think you’d look good together.”
She sighed and pressed her forehead to a bar.
“Maybe. I just can’t seem to let go…”
“I don’t really get it,” Yasen said. “You’ve been with other men. You seem to be enjoying yourself. Why not Ajay?”
“Those men don’t mean anything. It’s just fun. It’s just sex. Until I have Rabin out of my system, it wouldn’t be fair.”
He nodded. “I think I get that. So why can’t you let go?”
“I don’t know. Part of me wants to hear him out and hopes that he didn’t deceive me with ill intentions. But every time I think about it, I just remember how I was lied to my entire life. And he knew that, and he did it anyway. I thought he was a clean slate, but he was just like all of them. It’s over, and that’s for the best.”
“But?” he asked, sensing the hesitation in her voice.
“I miss him so much. What I felt for him…I don’t know; it’s not like anything I can describe. I think about him all the time, and I’m not sure what to do.”
Yasen nodded. “So, why are we here, then? Why are you here? Go and find him.”
She ran her tongue over her top teeth as she stared ahead. “I don’t know where he is. I fear he went back to Raja Abishek after I left Daragaab. I never got the sense that he wanted to remain in Dharati. And I’m not sure it’s safe for me. How loyal is he really to my father?”
“Rabin wouldn’t let anything happen to you. You know that.”
She tipped her face towards him. “What makes you so sure he could stop him?”
Yasen shrugged, taking a sip of his drink, the ice clinking softly in his glass. “Can’t you call up one of those dream things and talk to him?”
“If only it worked like that,” Zarya said. “I’ve never known how to control them. And maybe that’s also for the best. Maybe this ache inside me will go away with enough time and distance.”
The truth was that Zarya had gone to sleep every night for the past three months, hoping to enter the dream forest. Every morning, she woke up more and more dejected, wondering if she’d ever see him again or if whatever the gods had once planned for Zarya and Rabin was no longer in their sights.
All those speculations about him being her paramadhar had clearly been pointless.
“Do you forgive him?” Yasen asked.
Zarya chewed on her bottom lip and thought hard about her answer. “I don’t. I’m still angry. And though I owe him nothing, I also kind of want to see him and give him the chance to explain.” She let out a huff of air. “Maybe things were easier when I lived in Row’s cottage.”
“Sure, except I’m pretty sure you would have killed both Row and Aarav by now,” Yasen said with a smirk.
“You’re probably right,” Zarya replied, laughing.
She thought often about Aarav and the sacrifice he’d made. He’d left a hole in her heart she hadn’t expected. As for Row, they wrote to each other often, and she filled him in on what they’d been doing since arriving in Gi’ana. While he warned her to be cautious, he also agreed with the cause they were fighting.
“So, what are you planning to do?” Yasen asked.
“I don’t know,” Zarya replied. “Pretend I’m okay and distract myself with everything else?”
Yasen’s laugh was low and dark. “Oh, Zee, how you’ve grown since I rescued you from the swamp.”
“You didn’t rescue me. How dare you?”
He smiled, and she reached out, grabbing his hand and squeezing it.
Then they stared across the horizon as they both watched a plume of smoke curl gently against the starry night sky.